A young ex-con encounters secrets from the past and danger in the present when he returns to the rural Australian community to discover the truth behind a crime he supposedly committed when he was a child.

Downriver

Grant Scicluna

Year

2015

Runtime

99 min

Language

English

Country

Australia

Principal Cast

Kerry Fox, Robert Taylor, Reef Ireland

A moody thriller awash in grim secrets and
slowly surfacing revelations, this first feature
from Australian writer-director Grant
Scicluna exhibits a formal elegance and thematic
maturity we would normally expect
from a fully developed auteur. Reminiscent
of Winter's Bone or Jane Campion's miniseries
Top of the Lake, Downriver courageously
deals with loss, identity, trauma, and
hard-won redemption.

James (Reef Ireland) has just been
released from prison after serving time for
drowning a little boy when he himself was
just a child. The boy's body was never found,
and James, guilt-ridden and still haunted
by questions about what really happened
that day, returns to the rural community
where the crime took place and undertakes
a quest to find the body. Along the way, he
is confronted by bullies and sexual predators
from his past, and the punishment he
risks by breaking parole now pales next to
the threat of violence from the shadowy
characters emerging all around him.

Downriver boasts a bold sense of place:
under the surface of its seemingly sleepy
milieu lies a hidden network of abuse and
exploitation, blackmail and desire. Scicluna
maintains the suspense with spellbinding
layers of flashbacks and dialogue, creating
a tense atmosphere that's amplified by the
riveting performances from Ireland, Tom
Green, and Kerry Fox in the role of James'
tormented guardian. Downriver takes us to
some dark places, but it does so in pursuit
of those brutal truths that aren't so easily
washed away.